What's the difference between assault and attack?

Assault


Definition:

  • (n.) A violent onset or attack with physical means, as blows, weapons, etc.; an onslaught; the rush or charge of an attacking force; onset; as, to make assault upon a man, a house, or a town.
  • (n.) A violent onset or attack with moral weapons, as words, arguments, appeals, and the like; as, to make an assault on the prerogatives of a prince, or on the constitution of a government.
  • (n.) An apparently violent attempt, or willful offer with force or violence, to do hurt to another; an attempt or offer to beat another, accompanied by a degree of violence, but without touching his person, as by lifting the fist, or a cane, in a threatening manner, or by striking at him, and missing him. If the blow aimed takes effect, it is a battery.
  • (n.) To make an assault upon, as by a sudden rush of armed men; to attack with unlawful or insulting physical violence or menaces.
  • (n.) To attack with moral means, or with a view of producing moral effects; to attack by words, arguments, or unfriendly measures; to assail; as, to assault a reputation or an administration.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) DI James Faulkner of Great Manchester police said: “The men and women working in the factory have told us that they were subjected to physical and verbal assaults at the hands of their employers and forced to work more than 80-hours before ending up with around £25 for their week’s work.
  • (2) The author's experience in private psychoanalytic practice and in Philadelphia's rape victim clinics indicates that these assaults occur frequently.
  • (3) Although the group is constantly the target of an all-out political assault, it has a robust national fundraising operation that allows it to subsidize abortions for poor women and expand to new locations.
  • (4) The attitudes and practices of 96 doctors toward spousal assault victims in the Australian Capital Territory, Australia, were investigated by questionnaire surveys distributed to general practitioners.
  • (5) Some have been threatened and assaulted, while others’ homes have been ransacked, their families living in constant fear.
  • (6) I was amazed by the sheer scale of the operation, easily mistaken for a full military assault on a kraken.
  • (7) After Mousa's death, the surviving detainees were subjected to further assaults.
  • (8) Some 300 million women and girls are forced to defecate outside, exposed not only to the risks of disease and bacterial infection, but also harassment and assault by men.
  • (9) Alcohol use appeared to be a significant ingredient in the production of the assaultive behavior in the majority of the cases.
  • (10) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Trump ‘sways malevolently’ behind Hillary Clinton Instead, he began the night by assembling a group of women in a press conference to revisit alleged sexual assaults by Bill Clinton, before confronting his opponent hardest on her private email server.
  • (11) It is Vine who initiated this latest assault on Ed’s character.
  • (12) Sexual assault of women in the United States may have a prevalence rate of 25% or more.
  • (13) Inevitably, and necessarily, Labour has appeared split as the coalition has captured broad public support for its assault on the deficit.
  • (14) Reports of violence associated with delusional misidentification are reviewed and four patients described who were either perpetrators or victims of assaults as a consequence of the syndromes of Frégoli, Intermetamorphosis, Subjective Doubles and Capgras.
  • (15) It is believed that many women have yet to report assaults, and police appealed for people who had not already done so to come forward.
  • (16) Beatings with metal bars and cables were followed by so-called “security checks”, during which women in particular were subjected to rape and sexual assault by male guards.
  • (17) The retired judge’s report outlines multiple rapes and indecent assaults on children by Savile, which she claims were all “in some way associated with the BBC”.
  • (18) Sexual assault victims (1,059) under the age of 17 were evaluated over a period of 44 months in a teaching, metropolitan county emergency room.
  • (19) As Bradford University professor Paul Rogers told Jones, the bombing of Mali "will be portrayed as 'one more example of an assault on Islam'".
  • (20) It doesn't surprise me that a man whose hit song sounded like an assault anthem and featured a video full of naked models would attempt to get back his wife via public pressure and a threatening music video.

Attack


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To fall upon with force; to assail, as with force and arms; to assault.
  • (v. t.) To assail with unfriendly speech or writing; to begin a controversy with; to attempt to overthrow or bring into disrepute, by criticism or satire; to censure; as, to attack a man, or his opinions, in a pamphlet.
  • (v. t.) To set to work upon, as upon a task or problem, or some object of labor or investigation.
  • (v. t.) To begin to affect; to begin to act upon, injuriously or destructively; to begin to decompose or waste.
  • (v. i.) To make an onset or attack.
  • (n.) The act of attacking, or falling on with force or violence; an onset; an assault; -- opposed to defense.
  • (n.) An assault upon one's feelings or reputation with unfriendly or bitter words.
  • (n.) A setting to work upon some task, etc.
  • (n.) An access of disease; a fit of sickness.
  • (n.) The beginning of corrosive, decomposing, or destructive action, by a chemical agent.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In attacking the motion to freeze the licence fee during today's Parliamentary debate the culture secretary, Andy Burnham, criticised the Tory leader.
  • (2) The major treatable risk factors in thromboembolic stroke are hypertension and transient ischemic attacks (TIA).
  • (3) In January, Paris taxi drivers attacked an Uber car transporting two passengers from Charles de Gaulle airport.
  • (4) The manufacturers, British Aerospace describe it as a "single-seat, radar equipped, lightweight, multi-role combat aircraft, providing comprehensive air defence and ground attack capability".
  • (5) She had three attacks of severe migrainous headache accompanied with nausea and vomiting within three weeks.
  • (6) 2.39pm BST The European Union called for a "thorough and immediate" investigation of the alleged chemical attack.
  • (7) Lactate-induced anxiety and symptom attacks without panic were seen more often in the groups with panic attacks, but a full-blown panic attack was provoked in only four subjects, all belonging to the groups with a history of panic attacks.
  • (8) A 45-year-old mother of four, named as Hediye Sen, was killed during clashes in Cizre, while a 70-year-old died of a heart attack during fighting in Silopi, according to hospital sources.
  • (9) A full-scale war is unlikely but there is clear concern in Seoul about the more realistic threat of a small-scale attack on the South Korean military or a group of islands near the countries' disputed maritime border in the Yellow Sea.
  • (10) This attack can take place during organogenesis, during early differentiation of neural anlagen after neural tube closure or during biochemical differentiation of the brain.
  • (11) For the second propositus, a woman presenting with abdominal and psychiatric manifestations, the age of onset was 38 years; the acute attack had no recognizable cause; she had mild skin lesions and initially was incorrectly diagnosed as intermittent acute porphyria; the diagnosis of variegate porphyria was only established at the age of 50 years.
  • (12) My thoughts are with all those who have lost loved ones or been injured in this barbaric attack.
  • (13) The charges against Harrison were filed just after two white men were accused of fatally shooting three black people in Tulsa in what prosecutors said were racially motivated attacks.
  • (14) Treatment with salbutamol inhalation had a beneficial effect on the duration of their adynamic attacks.
  • (15) Diabetic retinopathy (an index of microangiopathy) and absence of peripheral pulses, amputation, or history of myocardial infarction, stroke, or transient ischemic attacks (as evidence of macroangiopathy) caused surprisingly little increase in relative risk for cardiovascular death.
  • (16) The remain side have already targeted Johnson’s credibility in attacks that the Brexiters believe were orchestrated by Downing Street.
  • (17) I first saw them live at the location of the terror attack, Manchester Arena – then the MEN – aged 15, a teen at a gig with my friends, as many of the Grande’s fans were.
  • (18) Maguire's colleagues rushed to her side, some administering first aid while others held her attacker, witnesses said.
  • (19) But late last month, Amisom pushed them out of Afgoye, a strategic stronghold 30km from Mogadishu, where Amisom officials say the militants used to manufacture explosives used in attacks on the capital.
  • (20) Repeated transient ischemic attacks in the same territory with minimal lesions on arteriography and non-homogeneous plaque on duplex scan; 2.